Content marketing for small teams: The Fundamental Checklist

This is a guest blog post from Helen Brooks of Further, following her talk at The Marketing Meetup: Norwich.This blog post is designed to compliment the talk, providing you the opportunity to quickly glance at all the info you need to check if your content is hitting the spot.If you would like to listen to the full talk, check out the podcast player at the top of the page!

The checklist below follows my presentation on content marketing for small teams. Marketers can use this checklist as a best practice ‘cheat sheet’ for content creation and tool for evaluating the success of a campaign. You can use this to help map out a strategy for the year, and/or for each individual content piece created.

While this is mainly for long-form written content, it can also apply to other content types like videos, podcasts and galleries. Whatever format you are working in, make sure that:

your content is relevant to your brand and your target audience

it is high-quality

it reaches the audience it is aimed at

you identify ways you can improve your research, production and promotion.

This approach is flexible, which is ideal for small teams that have varying budgets, capacity and expertise. For example, money isn’t the only factor that correlates with content quality. While it can make an help, there are ways you can improve the quality of your content simply by ensuring a clear structure.

Relevancy

Define why you need content, what your brand wants to say and to whom.

Set your content marketing objectives

Define your brand values and mission

Map out what you know about your target audience (start with why people need your product or service and break this down as far as you can. If you have multiple audiences, tackle them one at a time)

Use your map of audience interests to research relevant topics online

Define the topic or topics you want to create content for

Define the essential components of that topic (what is everyone else talking about) by reviewing top ranking pages

Create your content in the medium most relevant to the topic.

Quality

Make your content engaging using a clear structure, style and formatting, and imagery.

Include an introduction to the topic

Include clear section headings (often defined during the research phase)

Break up block text with pull quotes, bullet points and/or infoboxes

Add a call to action (making sure you have first sold your brand and shown its relevance to the interests of your target audience)